Her hopes dying, she tried again, patting the man’s cheek gently. “Mr. Jones, please. Can you hear me?”
A muscle twitched in the man’s leg.
Encouraged, Jacie spoke louder. “Mr. Jones, we’re going to get you some help, but can you help us?”
The man’s eyes fluttered open. “Set … up.” He closed his eyes again.
“Mr. Jones!” Jacie wanted to shake the man but was afraid to add to his injuries. “Please, did you see where they went? Where did they take my sister?”
His eyes never opened, but his lips moved.
Jacie leaned in closer, tilting her head to hear what he whispered.
“Not Jones.”
Jacie leaned back. “What do you mean?”
The man whispered again.
Leaning close, Jacie caught what sounded like letters.
“D … E … A.” As if it had taken everything he had left, the last letter ended on a raspy exhale.
Mr. Jones, or whoever he was, didn’t draw another breath.
Jacie felt for a pulse. Not even a weak one thumped against her fingertips. “No pulse. He’s not breathing.” She clamped his nose with her fingers and breathed for him.
Zach dropped to his knees on the other side of him and leaned the heel of his palms into the man’s chest five times. “Now breathe,” he instructed.
Jacie blew into the man’s mouth. His lungs expanded, pushing his chest up.
Zach resumed his compressions. For every five, Jacie breathed one breath.
Hank and the bodyguards scoured the vicinity while Zach and Jacie worked over Mr. Jones.
When they returned, Jacie glanced up at Hank. “Any sign of my sister?” She knew the answer, but she had to ask.
“None.”
Rather than let the news cripple her, Jacie renewed her efforts to save Mr. Jones.
After fifteen minutes, Zach quit pumping the man’s chest and he touched Jacie’s arm before she could breathe into the man’s mouth.
“He’s gone.”
“No.” Jacie sat back on her haunches. “He might have told us where they went.”
“I doubt it. From what you said, he was hit before they grabbed Tracie.” Zach rose to his feet and held out a hand to Jacie. “Come on, let’s get you back to the ranch. We’ll start the search in the morning.”
“She has to be okay.” Jacie let him pull her to her feet, where she leaned against him, pressing her forehead against the solid wall of his chest. “She’s all I have.”
Hank patted her back. “We’ll find her. Don’t you worry.”
Zach stood beside her. “I saw his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear him. What did Jones say to you before he died?”
“I’m not sure.” Jacie shook her head. She’d never had someone die on her. Hell, she’d never seen someone get shot in all the years she’d been working on the Big Elk Ranch. She’d never seen someone die of a gunshot wound. She pushed the image of the dead men from her mind and concentrated on the only clue she might have to find her sister. “At first he said what sounded like ‘set … up.’ Then he said ‘Not Jones … D … E … A.’”
Zach stiffened against her, his hands gripping her arm. “Are you sure?”
She glanced up into his face. “As sure as I can be. The man was barely able to whisper. I could have gotten it wrong. Why?”
“Damn. These men most likely were agents with the DEA.”
Hank ran a hand through his shocking-white hair and looked around the canyon walls. “Think they were set up?”
“Sounds like it.”
Jacie froze. “Oh, dear God.” She didn’t, she couldn’t have … “My sister is an FBI agent here on vacation to visit me.”
Zach still held her.
Jacie was sure, if he weren’t still gripping her arms, she’d have fallen to her knees. “Do you think she was working undercover, as well?”
“If so, and it was a setup …” Zach’s jaw tightened. “Apparently, there’s some bad blood in both agencies.”
Hank sighed. “Holy hell. I was too late, then.”
Zach dropped his hold on Jacie. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry, Jacie. I’ve failed your sister.” Hank reached out for one of Jacie’s hands. “You see, Tracie came to me yesterday asking for my help.”
“I don’t understand.” Jacie’s head spun. Had she been walking around in the clouds since her sister arrived? “My sister only got here two days ago. Why would she come to you?”
“She wanted help finding out who was the leak in her agency and she didn’t want to go through official channels.” Hank’s gaze shifted back to Zach. “Since you are former FBI, this was to be your first assignment.”
Chapter Three
Zach rode back to the Raging Bull Ranch, a knot the size of Texas twisting his gut.
Hank couldn’t be serious. To ask him to take on the FBI as his first assignment? The organization that had left him and Toni to die in the godforsaken hell of the Los Lobos cartel in the Mexican state of Chihuahua?
Captured in Juarez on assignment, drugged and transported to a squalid compound in Mexico, Zach and Toni had been tortured and starved in the cartel’s attempt to attain information from them about who in the FBI was supplying military weapons to their archrivals, La Familia Diablos.
He’d been forced to watch as they raped, mutilated and finally killed Toni. Bound and gagged, he’d been helpless, unable to do anything to save her.
When another gang stormed the compound, they’d crashed into the concrete building where Zach had been held, giving him the opportunity to escape under cover of the night. But it had been too late for Toni.
Wounded, dehydrated and barely able to see through swollen eyes, he dragged himself out of the compound and hid in the mountains, stealing food from a farmer until he could make his way back to the States.
Two years, surgery, rehab and psychiatric treatment had healed the external scars, but the internal ones festered like a disease.
Jacie rode on the back of the four-wheeler, her arms circled around Zach’s waist.
Hank wanted him to help her and her sister, who was certain to be experiencing exactly what Toni had
